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So, the Strata conference was good, and my talk was pretty well received. Work got in the way of me hanging out at the conference for the whole three days, but I did spend about a day and some change meeting lots of smart people (including a lot of ex-Yahooers) and taking in some talks. It’s a very different vibe from eMetrics – that’s not a judgment, just an observation. Much more technical and “hands-on” in nature – a lot of it reminded me of eMetrics 2006, with a focus on tools and technologies. If you missed it, or want to relive it, you can find Strata 2011 Speaker Slides & Videos.

One personal highlight was chatting with Duncan Davidson, who is doing a lot of photography for O’Reilly events (and many others .. check out his site). The kick was that he and I were in a Palo Alto community photography class with about a dozen other people back in … oh, 2002ish maybe? And now look at him: a pro photographer, living the dream…

Tonight I did something both humbling and inspiring at the same time. I read my own blog. Like, all of it. There’s not a lot to read, really, until you reach back to 2005. There’s now lots of missing images and busted links. Such is the web, I guess. But the experience was inspiring because I found myself on several occasions thinking “wow! that was well said! Did I really say that?” and then followed by “Hmm, I don’t think I’m that smart any more.” Perhaps blogging is like exercising – if you don’t use the muscle, it atrophies?

Speaking of busted links. Back when the web was black and white with blue links, I had some content on my old neato.org site, wherein I poked at a few sound and video devices to reveal their secrets. Various nooks and crannies of the web still have pointers to that material, and still get the occasional email asking if I have the content around somewhere and can I please put it back up? So over the weekend, I did.